Air New Zealand(MIS100 2009)

By CIO staff | Friday, July 24 2009

2008 ranking: 13

Senior IS executive: Julia Raue, CIO
Reports to: Rob McDonald, CFO
Size of IS shop: 213

PCs: 5273
Mobile PCs: 2037
Terminals: 679
Hand-held devices: 322
Total screens: 8311

Industry: Transport and warehousing
PC environment: Dell, HP, Windows XP
Server environment: IBM, HP, Sun, Windows 2003, Linux
DBMS: SQL, Oracle, MySQL, DB2
Address: 185 Fanshawe Street, Auckland
Website: www.airnz.co.nz
Key IS projects this year: Cargo management system; e-enablement for 777 and 787 fleet; international business transformation (airport self service/customer experience; engineering system replacement (regional airlines).)


Air New Zealand seeks to remain profitable by stimulating demand for travel and controlling costs in a market where revenues are declining. Towards this, skilled people are highly valued and a core business goal is to maintain high employment engagement.

CIO Julia Raue says strong technology delivery supports business operation, along with continuous improvement, innovation, growth and business transformation within Air New Zealand. The right IT tools and solutions also help Air New Zealand control costs.

“Technology plays a critical role in Air New Zealand’s ability to provide the uniquely Kiwi experience we want every one of our customers to enjoy.

“As a small, flexible airline we invest significantly in leading-edge technologies that enable our customers to access and book their travel in the way that suits them, and that helps make their journey quicker and more efficient,” says Raue.

She says projects using technologies that enhance the customer experience and aid self-service are of high priority.

“We can’t afford to be like everyone else and increasingly tech-savvy customers demand innovation and choice. Air New Zealand sees benefit in the e-enablement of its systems and services, with proven profitability and results from previous similar projects.”

Although the ICT operating and projects budget is down slightly on 2008, Air New Zealand is continuing to build on important projects initiated last year.
Being able to change fares, packages and offers quickly and get them to market in a fraction of the normal time through our online channels has given Air New Zealand a competitive edge — both from a customer and bottom-line perspective.

“Recently, we have invested in an exciting new domestic airport experience that features self-serve kiosks, bag check and gate scanning, utilising mobile phone and RFID technologies,” says Raue.

The new boarding process provides customers with three different types of boarding passes, or if they have no bags, they can proceed directly to the lounge, or straight to the gate. A new myairnz portal provides customers with the flexibility to fully customise their Air NZ desktop using widgets — it has a flexible design similar to igoogle so that users can move, add or delete sections of the content to suit their needs. Raue says customer feedback to these services has been overwhelmingly positive.

Other initiatives include development and investment in software and server virtualisation, and VoIP and wireless infrastructure. A new Cargo system to be launched later this year will provide game-changing advances to the cargo business and its customers. Equipping a mobile workforce and developing e-channels and e-business initiatives are also important projects that continue throughout 2009. New projects include investment in unified communications platforms and technologies and development of web channel using Web 2.0 models and technologies.

Air New Zealand uses a selective outsourcing model. Axon, IBM and Gen-i are outsourcing vendor partners and suppliers. Axon is responsible for backup, along with IBM, and for PC and wintel server maintenance and support.
IBM looks after the datacentre, host maintenance, database and midrange systems maintenance and support. Gen-i is responsible for network systems and hardware management.